For the good of the nation . . .

Regarding the Julian Sanchez op-ed I linked earlier, Matt says:

FDR and Harry Truman did some dirt, LBJ did more, and then Richard Nixon took things to such extravagant extremes that he got caught, people got outraged, and restrictions were put in place. But the stuff that had been going on for decades before Nixon was really bad on its own on its own terms. Given the long bipartisan record of wiretap abuse, and given the greater range of possible abuses under modern technological circumstances, it's all-but-inevitable that if we further weaken the restrictions on the White House's ability to act, that abuses will happen.

It's really baffling to me that Republican members of congress -- and all-too-many Senate Democrats -- don't see it this way. Unlimited, unaccountable power will be abused, and not always in ways that Republicans like.

In recent months, it has become clear to me that the Bush administration doesn't seem to be doing this out of some venal attempt to grab power for Republicans. Rather, they genuinely believe that the executive branch was stripped of too much power during the backlash from the Nixon scandals, power that they need to fight terrorism and other security threats.

This is not, mind you, particularly reassuring. Almost every government official is seized by the vision of all the good things they could do if they only had more power. Terrorism, and the fading memory of Nixon, have given the Bush administration more leeway than most to actually accrue some of that power. It was our job to tell them to stop daydreaming and get back to work. And we pretty much failed miserably.

Comments

You mean, YOU failed miserably, right? Some of didn't used to fellate Bush's cod-piece on a regular basis.

Posted by NutellaonToast | March 17, 2008 1:59 PM

In recent months, it has become clear to me that the Bush administration doesn't seem to be doing this out of some venal attempt to grab power for Republicans.

Not that we know of. There could be stuff that we don't know about. Certainly the Dem capitulation on so many matters calls into question whether somebody has dirt on somebody. However, I'll grant that any such theory (1) is nonfalsifiable and (2) doesn't actually require wiretapping on the scale that they've pursued.

The more important point is that even if such abuse isn't happening yet, leaving unchecked power lying around is a dangerous thing. You can only leave that stuff lying out for so long before somebody does something.

Posted by thoreau | March 17, 2008 2:06 PM

It probably didn't help that a lot of the people complaining seemed to consider him to be The Worst Thing Ever long before things like the wiretapping occurred. Crying wolf, &c.

The price that the media pays for indulging their desire to tear down politicians they dislike is that they forfeit a lot of their ability to influence those politicians in the future.

Posted by Origen | March 17, 2008 2:26 PM

I dunno. I would say that the Yoo justification for presidential authority as the unitary executive in wartime is an obvious power grab. On top of that, the warrantless wiretapping actions by the president were taken SPECIFICALLY because they were illegal. the president had the authority to perform at least some of his wiretaps under FISA but moved the bulk of them to an illegal program so as to show that FISA could be flaunted. Arguably, there were (and are) other elements of these programs that FISA would never have authorized--their clearly were in 2006-2007, as the FISA ruling prohibited something that congress hurriedly shoehorned back into legality.

You could argue that these were steps taken to 'restore' the executive to the pre Watergate condition, but that doesn't seem too far removed from seeking power for the sake of power.

I will concede that strictly on the executive side, bush hasn't been engaged in a political power grab--in a way, I'm glad. His administration will probably give us a democratic congress and president in the coming years. But that doesn't mean his actions weren't often motivated by partisan gain. His choices for administration posts, courts and policies were strictly partisan. He used the office of the presidency to push political talking points (more than any administration I remember). He took to referring to the democratic party as the 'democrat' party--a common FOX news pejorative. He used the specter of imminent attacks to scare voters into picking republicans.

He's in no way blameless. And....in a profound way, to refer to the actions of this administration in this light is to cast too much of a good glow on them. It's akin to suggesting that their invasion of Iraq was undertaken with 'flawed' intelligence--the statement obscures the fact that the administration ginned up intelligence and bat away countervailing views on the subject. we come away with a much kinder view of them than we ought to.

Posted by Adam Hyland | March 17, 2008 2:36 PM

"Illegal program"?? In my world, we don't call things illegal until they have been adjudicated as illegal, or are clearly illegal on their face. Neither of these has happened with the warrantless wiretaps of international telephone calls. In fact, there is a lot of legal authority which says that the President has the power directly from the Constitution and doesn't need the FISA court for precisely this sort of thing.

So try not to let your obvious case of BDS influence your remarks.

Posted by Rex | March 17, 2008 3:18 PM

When somebody admits that he spied on domestic calls without a warrant, and when the FISA statute says that you can't do that shit, I'm pretty comfortable describing it as "illegal." Of course, I wouldn't want anybody to go to jail until that description of the activity is confirmed by a jury, but as a provisional description, yeah, I'll run with it.

Now, you could say that I shouldn't even be suggesting such a thing until it's proven to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, and I'd answer that proving things to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt is an excellent way to handle allegations. Just proving to a judge that probably cause of a crime exists is also an excellent way to handle investigations. And I'd even suggest that Bush try conducting his activities in a manner consistent with those excellent ways of doing things...

Posted by thoreau | March 17, 2008 3:59 PM

Hey, if we get good results from this idea of proving guilt to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt, and only tapping calls after establishing probable cause, maybe we could write these good ideas down somewhere, and turn them into binding rules.

Just a crazy thought.

Posted by thoreau | March 17, 2008 4:05 PM

"Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications." NYT 'quoting' anon sources

"When somebody admits that he spied on domestic calls without a warrant, and when the FISA statute says that you can't do that shit, I'm pretty comfortable describing it as "illegal."
thoreau-above

Not the same thing.

Posted by MikeinAppalachia | March 17, 2008 6:06 PM

You mean, YOU failed miserably, right? Some of didn't used to fellate Bush's cod-piece on a regular basis.

Every once in a while, the family cat gets something small, round, and hard lodged in her lower GI tract just shy of the litterbox. At some point a few minutes later, she will suddenly twich involuntarily and deposit it on the floor, for some unsuspecting party to encounter thereafter and mutter "What the...?" just before fetching a paper towel and disinfectant spray.

The above-quoted comment bears more than a passing resemblance to that experience.

Posted by anony_mouse_ | March 17, 2008 6:20 PM

Some of didn't used to fellate Bush's cod-piece on a regular basis.

Just out of curiosity, what other part of a politician do you fellate, whether irregularly or otherwise?

Posted by Rob Lyman | March 17, 2008 7:06 PM

So, thoreau, if Congress passed a law saying that the President was no longer the commander in chief, and Bush directed the military to take some action, you would claim Bush acted illegally?

Posted by Rex | March 18, 2008 11:34 AM